– driver’s widow struggles to provide for children

More than five months after a bridge collapsed under a cement truck injuring him, Toolsie Persaud Limited (TPL) worker Imran Hassan is struggling to regain the full use of his legs following three operations.

His colleague, the driver of the truck, Ramesh Ramrattan, was killed in the accident.

Hassan said his family is giving him their full support so that his life can be normal again, which is something he is fully bent on accomplishing. “I want to get back on my feet man …get my life back together,” Hassan said at his Eccles, East Bank Demerara home where he has been recuperating since November 4, when he was discharged from the Georgetown Public Hospital. Hassan had been in the hospital for several months and had undergone three operations, after he was hauled from beneath a TPL Ready Mix cement truck that toppled when the access bridge to New Providence collapsed.

Hassan sustained multiple burns on his legs from the blowtorch that was used to help extricate him from where he was pinned under the truck. His lower right leg around the ankle area was crushed and he also suffered bruised and pinched intestines. It had taken scores of volunteers almost two hours to get him from under the truck and many persons thought he would have died. But as he recounted to Stabroek News while he was in the hospital; God’s grace and his father’s voice assuring him that he would be alright gave him the strength to persevere through the ordeal.

Hassan still has a way to go to full recovery, but he is confident and determined that he will get there. He was sitting on the sofa at home, watching a movie when this newspaper visited. His father Naseer Hassan, who was at home on his lunch break, sat nearby.

Hassan said he now spends many of his days in front of the television, which has become the centre point of his life. With his father at work and his sister going about her business he spends most of his time watching TV since he cannot move about much.

However, he still makes a commendable effort to get around on his own, given the damage to his legs. Walking is difficult and he tries to move about by the use of crutches or a walker but he cannot put too much pressure on his right leg. He also has a wheelchair which he uses to move about sometimes. Hassan still needs assistance to do some things for himself; such as taking a bath. But he now feeds himself, something he could not do a few months ago. And he tries to exercise his legs by lying on his back and moving them up and down, even trying a few steps.

Having to adjust from being fully active to only sitting or lying on a chair poses a mental challenge and Hassan is not afraid or ashamed to say that he wishes things could be different. And that is the reason why his immediate focus is on getting better. His therapy sessions started on Friday and he is already focused on channelling all his energies into walking upright again.

Rubbing the aches in his leg, which get worse when it rains, Hassan said that his doctor told him “everything is left up to me now…only me can help me self now.” And given the fact that he has gone through three successful surgeries–two skin grafts and one abdominal–and lost one of his toes, therapy is something he plans to overcome too.
Right knee

Most of his problems lie with his right knee. The blowtorch, which was used to help extricate him from under the truck, burned a huge hole behind his right knee. When that wound healed, it pulled the skin of his leg up, making it appear as though his right leg is shorter than the left. Also, the right shin and foot were smashed and badly burned and after the skin grafts his leg had to be left with the knee bent in order to heal properly. The therapy will also serve to strengthen both legs which have not been in use for a long time.

It won’t be as it was before, but both Hassan and his father are prepared to live with that. Even after therapy he will have a limp and the deep scars on his legs are going to remain forever, but as his father put it, “even if he was cripple,” and he had to do everything for him, “I just glad he alive.”

Hassan is grateful to his father and sister, who try their utmost to make his life as pleasant as possible. During the Christmas holidays, Naseer Hassan took his son to visit his friends. And every now and again he would take him to the shop at the end of the road to play a few games of dominoes and chat with the boys–little things that would take the monotony out of his days.

It is a bit difficult for them to cope with only the older Hassan working, and they are grateful for the help they received from TPL which paid Hassan’s salary every month since his accident. Up to yesterday, however, he was yet to receive money for the month of December even though he and his father made visits to the company.

Hassan said they were told that they need a paper from the doctor to prove that he still needs the money. He explained that he really does and will need it even more when his therapy starts as he will have to take a taxi to and from the Georgetown Hospital. In the meantime he is much better than his days in the hospital and has regained a few of the pounds he lost while he was hospitalized.

The injured young man said that his experience is a testimony to how fragile life is and “you gotta tek it more seriously.”
‘Very punishing life’

Meanwhile, for Vidya Ramrattan, widow of the truck driver who died on that fateful day life has changed.

She has resorted to taking a job as a domestic in order to support her three children, one of whom will write the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations in a few months. She said she received a lump sum from TPL and used it to buy her daughter a computer and do repairs on her relatives’ house in which she lives. The company also gave her wire mesh to build a fence around the house and paid the child’s CSEC examination fees.

The widow however was disappointed when the holidays came and went without so much as a “how you do” from the company for which her husband worked. While she is grateful for the help she received, Ramrattan said she felt the company should help a bit more, given that all of her children are at school; she is now the sole provider and domestic work is hardly available.

She said she also visited     the Ministry of Human Ser-vices to see Minister Priya Manickchand on several occasions, but she was turned away. “They always say she not there or she busy,” Ramrattan told Stabroek News.

The woman said she was trying to access public assistance to help with her “very punishing life,” which she further describes as a step down from when her husband was alive.

She has had to sell a house lot her husband had acquired at the Diamond Housing Scheme since she could not afford to build a house and the land would have been seized if a structure was not put up within a certain period of time.

Ramrattan said she had asked TPL to build the house for her, but was advised to get a loan. She said this was not possible since she did not have a proper job and no assets to put up. In the meantime she lives in her relatives’ house and hopes that she can stay.

Anisa Dass, her elder daughter, has registered to write 10 CSEC subjects come May. She recently entered a beauty pageant at her school, Zenon Academy, and won the crown. She told Stabroek News that she is going to make her mother proud.

Kamini, the younger daughter, was having one of her happy days, playing “shark, shark” with other neighbourhood children. She took time out from the game to say how much she missed her dad. When asked what she remembered most, Kamini said that she missed the motor bike rides to go and buy ice cream. Her mother related that during the holidays Kamini cried most of the time. Ramrattan’s 17-year-old son was not at home when Stabroek News visited.

Ramrattan misses her husband dearly, evident in the huge framed picture of him that greets anyone who ventures up the short flight of steps. But life must go on and she must try to make it as easy as possible for her three children.